Each image included in photographer Alex Webb's first book (now an out-of-print classic), published in 1986, displays his mastery of color, composition, and light. The tropics are portrayed as a hybrid land mixed with new and old, where natural beauty and human desperation coexist.

For me, photography affirms reality, but does not explain it. Part of its strength lies in its ambiguity, its suggestiveness. I embrace that strength of photography rather than worrying about its weaknesses.